Persimmon wine variations

Several years ago we moved to a house with the largest persimmon tree (Diospyros virginiana) I've ever seen. We've made bread and cookies from the fruit in the past but I always told myself I'd make wine someday.

The yield varies from year to year, but as luck would have it, this year, the year I started winemaking, this tree has one of the heaviest yields in memory. Also one of the earliest...a month ahead of schedule. Three days ago it started raining ripe persimmons and over the past 3 nights I've gathered just under 30# of ripe persimmons. The tree is still absolutely loaded with fruit. If I can keep up I should end up with >100# of persimmons.

So my question is this: what are some variations of a basic persimmon wine recipe? Google shows the Jack Keller recipe of course, and most links are pretty close to that same recipe. I found one that used saffron, that sounded interesting. I'm willing to try something that is untested...I should have plenty of fruit to experiment with. I'm interested in any and all ideas.

Thanks.

Robert

We made an experimental one gallon batch last night. Used half sugar and half honey, and Pasteur Red yeast. Finished it about 11 last night. Checked the water filled vent bottle this morning for signs of bubbles/fermentation and didn't see any. Then noticed the vent tube wasn't in the bottle. Next I noticed the cork and vent tube were not on the one gallon carboy. It was then my wife said OMG LOOK AT THE CEILING. The batch blew it's cork some time in the night and there is now persimmon mung stuck to the ceiling in my kitchen.

If you are just starting a wine, it may be best to use a food grade primary (bucket). Yeasts need oxegen at this stage. Once your wine is approaching dry, transfer to a gallon jug with an air lock. The ceilings stay cleaner this way! Haha

I have not made my persimmon batch yet...waiting on the fruit to be ready here. BUT, I am thinking about either mading a mead vs wine and adding vanilla or ginger. Those two additions are a few of my favorites when enjoying persimmons.
Will watch this post with interest!
Stressbaby--where are you geographically that your persimmons are ready so soon?

I've not done this wine.

Any time I do a new wine, I like to do it as straight up as possible. Usually a small, 3g batch.

This lets me assess the wine on it's own with a good base of experience to build on for future batches. This also leaves the opportunity to blend with other wines, backsweeten with a variety of juices, etc. without other ingredients getting in the way.

I would start by collecting/freezing as much as possible. Test a sample of the juice for pH, TA and sugar. Taste the skins for tannin.

Plan your batch and make adjustments based on these results aiming for little to no water additions.

There is a common opinion that Keller's recipes are light on fruit and high on alcohol. Keep this in mind.

Above all, keep us posted on progress and results!

GC,
Ouch, sorry about that!

saramc,
I am in central Missouri. We had spring 3 weeks early and severe drought.

I like those ideas, I had thought of maybe some combination of cinnamon/vanilla/allspice/clove or maybe orange/citrus.

I will post my trials here. Is the general approach to make these additions to the secondary?

BobF said:

I've not done this wine.

Any time I do a new wine, I like to do it as straight up as possible. Usually a small, 3g batch.

This lets me assess the wine on it's own with a good base of experience to build on for future batches. This also leaves the opportunity to blend with other wines, backsweeten with a variety of juices, etc. without other ingredients getting in the way.

I would start by collecting/freezing as much as possible. Test a sample of the juice for pH, TA and sugar. Taste the skins for tannin.

Plan your batch and make adjustments based on these results aiming for little to no water additions.

There is a common opinion that Keller's recipes are light on fruit and high on alcohol. Keep this in mind.

Above all, keep us posted on progress and results!

Click to expand...

Thanks Bob. I've already found that to be true about Keller's recipes and automatically bump the fruit by a pound or more. The carambola I made from his recipe will need an f-pac.

I won't be able to press any juice from this fruit. When you mash these through a coarse strainer you get what I'd call a pulp, more like a purée or oatmeal consistency. But I can sure post the test results from the primary.

Persimmons are different than most fruit wines. By the time they're ripe and falling off the tree they're the consistency of baby food. We basically just cut them with water. There's alot of pulp and slop to a batch of persimmon wine. But I think it's some of the most flavorful of the fruit wines.

I have a persimmon tree. Last year the crop was so heave the limbs were breaking off from the weight. I've made some pleasant tea but havent done a wine yet.

I am also in central Missouri and have an abundance of early ripening persimmons. I have a test batch right now using the Keller recipe, but modified to target an ABV of 12%. Very surprised at the pale yellow color given the dark orange color of the fruit. Still in secondary ferment. I would be happy to share enough persimmons for a batch to any local winos. I have five trees that are pretty ripe and a couple of large trees in the woods that are still green.

I am pretty new at this, but I have also made Keller's frozen strawberry recipe as well as his blackberry recipe. I have to say the strawberry is shaping up to be completely awesome and will taste the blackberry when I rack at the end of the month.

Terroirdejeroir,
I'm in Fulton, not far from you. Some time we should get together and compare our product. I've bottled 2 gal of guava, and currently in carboys I have hibiscus, beautyberry, highbush cranberry, and starfruit, all home grown. In the freezer and greenhouse I have a number of other fruits which I'm just collecting/waiting until I have enough to make a batch (banana, guava, calamondin, plumeria, plus several other shy producers).
I'm up to ~50# of persimmons in the freezer, but I also have 20# of pumpkin that I want to get going first.

My first batch of persimmon wine is in the secondary. I took BobF's recommendation and made this one more or less straight up, using sort of a combination of 2-3 recipes. Per gallon:

3.5 lbs American Persimmons
1.75 lbs finely granulated sugar
1 tsp pectic enzyme
2 tsp acid blend
1 Campden tablet, crushed and dissolved
1 tsp yeast nutrient
8 pints water
Red Star Champagne wine yeast

Some recipes called for less acid, some more. I started with 1t acid blend but starting pH was 3.8 so I added more. OG 1.090. Most recipes start with 2# sugar. I'm glad I dialed that back, otherwise I would have overshot badly on OG.

I didn't deseed these persimmons. Most recipes said to do so, some said you didn't have to, but it would increase the tannins. I started deseeding these and OMG what a mess.

Then at 36 hours my 6 gal bucket was overflowing with foam. Given that I didn't want *too* much tannin and given my overflowing bucket, I removed the nylon straining bag. What was ~18# of persimmon was down to about 8# of mostly skin and seed; the must was the consistency of oil, very thick.

Last night I was at 1.010 and it went to the secondary. Some of the thicker stuff from the bottom went into a 1 gal so hopefully I can use that to top off the 5 gal.

Any thoughts on not deseeding are welcome. Also welcome are any thoughts on removal of the persimmon bag at 36 hr.

PS: I'm using a Better Bottle for this batch and every time you lift it by the handle is sucks a little water from the airlock down into the wine.

I started an experimental one gallon batch with some early ripening persimmons that weren't quite as sweet as yours as I added 29.3 oz of sugar to get to a 1.085 OG. I also left the seeds in as I cannot imagine separating them from the goo. I used Red Star Montrachet and didn't have any foaming problems.

My batch is about seven weeks old now and extrememly clear. Also surprisingly yellow as I would have expected more of an orange tint based on the color of must. I will probably sample, stabilize and back sweeten some time next month.

I currently have 18.5 lbs of persimmons in the freezer and will probably gather another 5-10 lbs later today. I will likely start a larger batch soon and I am considering using Prise de Mousse (Lalvin EC-1118) yeast to see what difference that makes.

Good luck!

terroir,
I see a ridiculous amount of pulp/gross lees/sludge in my secondary now. Did you see that? Did it compact?

Had a customer in the other day and our discussion was about leaving the seeds in or not. We came to conclusion to leave them in. Some of the persimmons from the south are the size of a tangerine where the ones up here are like ping pong balls. One recipe we looked at said to quarter and remove seeds, we figured they were talking about the larger ones.

I was going to try a small batch this year but with the drought the squirrels got everything this summer.

Stressbaby- let it sit a while it will compress. BTW how long has it been in the secondary?
Looking good!

I strained quite a bit of lees out when I went from primary to secondary, but nothing like your photo. I still got a lot of precipitate in secondary. I had some peach wine going at about the same time and I probably got 2-3 times as much precipitate from the persimmon. It has cleared really beautifully, though - hang in there!

Just got back from my secret spot out in the woods where I gather persimmons. I have about 100lbs right now, will hopefully have close to 200 lbs when all is said and done, and yes, these are the native N. American ones. I have to fight the deer off to get my allotment.

The first time I made this wine, I spent an ENTIRE day trying to smoooosh (extra o's required) the fruit through a medium size hole strainer, and it was a pain. I added water to each batch I strained to try to get as much pulp out as possible. What I ended up with was a 7 gallon bucket of sludge, that when fermenting, had a crust that was 1/2 the height of the bucket!

I vowed to never make this wine again, but alas, I will be doing it this year. I have a 30 gallon primary now (stainless steel) and was thinking of making the wine in there, we shall see.

So this year, I am hoping to leave seeds in, and it seems from reading this thread, that the jury is not quite in on leaving seeds in or not. For the size of each persimmon, over 50% of the fruit itself is usually seed with the variety we get here in SE Oklahoma. I always work very hard to get as much of the pulp off the seed, but if I could leave the seeds in the mash, maybe I could save more of the overall fruit? But alas, I am worried as to how the seeds will affect the flavor. So should I :
(1) deseed and strain, or
(2) throw the frozen persimmons whole into my primary and just mash it up and add water

Also, if anyone wants my recipe from my first attempt (which came out exceptionally well), I can post it.

Stressbaby said:

Then at 36 hours my 6 gal bucket was overflowing with foam. Given that I didn't want *too* much tannin and given my overflowing bucket, I removed the nylon straining bag. What was ~18# of persimmon was down to about 8# of mostly skin and seed; the must was the consistency of oil, very thick.

Any thoughts on not deseeding are welcome. Also welcome are any thoughts on removal of the persimmon bag at 36 hr.

Click to expand...

This wine, of all the fruit wines I have made, was the messiest, most labour intensive, and had the largest cap that I had to break down up to 5 times a day! It was ridiculous.

One option on the deseeding is to use a small lingerie washer bag to strain the pulp through. The holes are too big to let the seeds through, but will let everything else through. Bonus is that the bag is mashable, and you can twist the living daylights out of it to get the max out of the persimmons. It makes a horrible mess, but you might find it easier than using a solid metal strainer.

As for the mess at fermentation, if I do not make it in my 30 gallon primary, I will break up the batch in such as a way to spread it out over multiple 5 gallon buckets. You will lose a ton of volume over the course of processing this wine. First time I made it, I had 7 gallons to start with, ended up with 13 bottles at the finish! I would love to know how to make this stuff not lose so much volume over the course of the rackings.

kfrinkle,
I would like to see your recipe.
As I watch this first 5 gallon batch, I have to say I'm in agreement about the lost volume. The pulp/lees is not compacting much at all and if I were to rack off the wine right now I might get perhaps 3 gal from the 5 gallon I started with. I think I will be ordering some more 3 gallon carboys.

2011.01.15
Spent the entire day filtering good stuff out of a 5 gallon bucket of persimmons. Put two 2.5 gallon zippies back in the freezer.
I am not sure how much pulp was left, but it was thick even after bucket was filled to 6.5 gallon level.

Mixed the following in 7 gallon food grade bucket:
- unknow lbs of persimmon pulp
- 1 tbsp yeast energizer
- 1 tsp pectic enzyme
- 3 tbsp acid blend
- 1/2 tbsp wine tannin
- 6 lbs of sugar
- 1/4 tsp campden
- water to make approx 6.5 gallons
Covered and let sit overnight

2011.01.15
Added the yeast at 9:00 PM. Unable to get S.G. reading, too thick! Added extra 1 lb of sugar.

2011.01.16
Fermentation has begun!

2011.02.09
Removed polybag, transferred to carboy

2011.03.04
Racked off to carboy, still fermenting. Added approx. 22 OZ of local (Caddo) honey.

2011.03.17
Racked off again. Specific Gravity was at .996 at 73F. Tasted a little astringent, very high alcohol taste, hopefully stabilizer + sugar will help with this.

2011.05.04
Racked off again. Added stabilizer + 3 lbs sugar.

2011.07.02
Bottled tonight. Nice honey taste with persimmon. Not bad at all! 13 bottles total, a little darker than the pear wine from December.